"An account of the life and work of Morris Hirshfield, an immigrant to the US in the 1890s; a successful tailor and shoe designer; and then a celebrated self-taught artist, beloved of the surrealists"-- Provided by publisher
A garment worker and slipper manufacturer with no training in art, Morris Hirshfield was never expected to make history. Against all odds, his wildly stylized paintings of female figures, often nude, animals, and landscapes became internationally known in the 1940s. Admired by Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, and the French surrealists, his peak moment of visibility occurred in 1943, when the Museum of Modern Art mounted a one-man show of his work. The exhibition was widely reviewed—though mostly reviled—by the press, who jeeringly crowned Hirshfield “Master of the Two Left Feet” for his tendency to display the female body in that unorthodox fashion. After the artist's death in 1946, his work was largely forgotten, but in Master of the Two Left Feet, art historian Richard Meyer rediscovers Hirshfield for twenty-first-century audiences, offering full-color reproductions that capture the vibrant imagination and sheer visual pleasure of Hirshfield's paintings. The book also features a catalog of works compiled by curator Susan Davidson which provides the most comprehensive documentation of the artist's work ever assembled. Ten years in the making, Master of the Two Left Feet presents Hirshfield's unlikely career as a painter not only as a missing episode in the history of twentieth-century art but as a case study of the ways in which artists go missing from historical knowledge and public memory. By looking closely at Hirshfield and his milieu in 1940s Brooklyn, Meyer demonstrates how much we have yet to learn, and to see, of the visual past. The book accompanies the exhibition “Morris Hirshfield Rediscovered,” at the American Folk Art Museum, New York City, September 22, 2022–January 27, 2023 -- Provided by publisher

• Introduction : Practice makes perfect / Paula Marincola
• Show and tell / Robert Storr
• In lieu of higher ground / Lynne Cooke
• You talking to me? On curating group shows that give you a chance to join the group / Ralph Rugoff
• The unstable institution / Carlos Basualdo
• With our faces to the rising sun / Thelma Golden with Glenn Ligon
• Mies's new national gallery : empty and full / Detlef Mertins
• Design and architecture / Paola Antonelli interviewed by Bennett Simpson
• Who's afraid of gift-wrapped kazoos? / Jeffrey Kipnis
• Handy-crafts : a doctrine / Glenn Adamson
• Temple/White cube/Laboratory / Iwona Blazwick
• Making space for art / Mary Jane Jacob
• Questions of practice / Mark Nash
• Wall text / Ingrid Schaffner.

• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. The Luxembourg gallery, 1750-1779
• 2. D'Angiviller's Louvre project
• 3. The revolutionary Louvre
• 4. The Musee Central des Arts
• 5. Alexandre Lenoir and the Museum of French Monuments
• Conclusion
• Appendices.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Containing the greatest collection of Old Master paintings and antique sculptures ever assembled under one roof, the Louvre, founded in the final years of the Enlightenment, became the model for all state art museums subsequently established. This book chronicles the formation of this great museum, from its origins in the French royal picture collections to its apotheosis during the Revolution and Napoleonic Empire. More than a narrative history, Andrew McClellan's account explores the ideological underpinnings, pedagogic aims, and aesthetic criteria of the Louvre, as well as its contemporary, the Museum of French Monuments, which in complementary ways laid the foundation for the modern museum age. Here, the central and abiding questions of museum practice-arrangement of art works, lightning, restoration and conservation, public education and service to the state - were first defined and given visual expression. Drawing on much new and archival material, this book also casts new light on the art world of eighteenth- century Paris and its most colourful characters, from Roger de Piles and La Font de Saint-Yonne, to Jacques-Louis David and Alexandre Lenoir.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• v. 1. Art nouveau and art deco
• v. 2. Collectibles, jewelry, furniture, decorations and paintings
• v. 3. Jewelry and watches
• v. 4. American Indian art
• v. 5. Americana and European and American paintings, drawings and prints
• v. 6. Contemporary art.